“Dragon, right?” Dank had replied.
“Yes” was the sole response, no more communication after that.
“And look, check it out, there’s a signature code to the texts.” Ayana tapped something else on the screen and the image that had been attached to the text expanded. It was a photo of a piece of paper with the letters L.M.F. written across the center in strong black marker. “It’s probably a way to authenticate the message as real. If you notice, it’s like a signature, changing with every image, on every text.” Ayana cocked her head, a “hmm” escaping her lips.
“Who could that be?” Fox asked, more to himself than to us.
“L.M.F.” I repeated the letters out loud, trying to making any kind of link in my head. The first link was outrageous but came out of my mouth anyway. “Little Miss Funshine?”
Ayana and Fox looked at me with a blank stare before bursting out in laughter.
“Just brainstorming,” I said, laughing along.
“Hey, it could be, dude,” Ayana said. “You never know these days. There’s a hacker group called Teddy Bear Army, so who knows what drug dealers are calling themselves.”
Fox wasn’t laughing anymore. He was staring at me, his eyes narrowing. “You’re a genius, Jonah.”
Ayana and I both went: “Huh?”
“I was thinking those three letters could be someone’s initials, but maybe they aren’t. They could stand for something else, like a movie or a book.”
“A place?” I asked, my brain stretching for connections.
“It could be,” Fox said excitedly.
“Still doesn’t help crack the drop code,” Ayana was quick to point out.
I looked to the screen, racked my brain. “If we figure out the drop and pickup location, we can set up surveillance and get the source of Dragon on camera. This is like hunting El Chapo before he was ever El Chapo. We have a chance to stop something big from happening. We just need to crack that code.”
“Do you boys have any leads yet?” Her amber golden eyes jumped between the two of us.
“Things are starting to point in a surprising direction,” Fox admitted. “We’ve found some evidence that’s beginning to make it seem like this entire thing is headed by someone from the inside. One of the guys at the top of Club Trinity.”
She raised her eyebrows, her lips parting and her head nodding slowly. “Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s been my reaction,” Fox said, a dry chuckle escaping his lips.
We dug through the rest of Dank’s phone (whose real name was actually Norman Reese, which… sure). There was nothing else besides random dick pics and bookmarked articles on how to grow weed in your closet. He had numbers saved of other drug dealers and suppliers, but trying to trace any of them led us to burner phones.
By the end of an hour, we could see we had all we could get. It was useful, for sure, but we were still confused as fuck.
“Thank you, Ayana. I really appreciate all the help.” Fox took her into a tight hug as we said our goodbyes. When they finished, she turned to me, a warm smile on her face.
“Pleasure to meet you, Jonah.” She rejected the hand I held out for her and took me into a hug. In my ear, she whispered, “He’s a great guy.”
And then we separated, the words echoing through me.
We got into the elevator and rode it down to the lobby, talking excitedly about what we’d found and what we still needed to find. Tossing around different solutions to the puzzle we were just handed. We knew the letters in the signature definitely didn’t stand for Little Miss Funshine, but we were close to something else. And what were all those dates in that message? A grove was involved, but what the hell did that mean? There were a shit ton of groves in Miami. The fact that our investigation was honing in on the top of Club Trinity’s pyramid gave us a little bit of help, but answers still evaded us. We weren’t at the end of this thing yet, but we were getting damn near close, and that idea was exhilarating.
Something that wasn’t as exhilarating, though? Reality. The reality that, as we exited Ayana’s building, I still didn’t have my own place to live in. Fox was more than kind to offer me his place, and Chibby seemed to have adjusted in record speed to his change in surroundings, but I knew it would never be a permanent place for me. It couldn’t.
“You look stressed,” Fox noted as we walked down the street to our cars. The sun was gone, replaced by a sliver of a bright moon.
“I’m…” Damn. Was it that obvious? “Yeah, I’m stressing myself out right now. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“What are you stressing out over? The case? We’re going to figure it out. L.M.F. Keep saying it over and over again in your head.”